


i think i made you up inside my head

by hannahnyrie



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: ALSO I am team something happened after the cutout in 2x05, Also there's a letter at the end because that is apparently my brand now, Eve character study, Eve dreams of Villanelle before meeting her, Eve is a disoriented gay, Eve knows Carolyn and Kenny before the events of the show, F/F, Konstantin is here but is never named and if you squint you can see him, POV Eve Polastri, Pre-1x01, Villaneve, and martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:22:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahnyrie/pseuds/hannahnyrie
Summary: Eve longs to live it all again, even the bloody intervals. What happened to the careful harmony of malice and tenderness flowing eternally between them? It must belong to the dream but Eve needs it back, needs to steal it and establish authorship, needs to race through another endless series of voids just to find even one more strand of blonde hair on a bridge.- Eve dreams of Villanelle before meeting her. -
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	i think i made you up inside my head

“I can’t forget how tired you were.”

“Did I look really tired?”

The room is quiet until it isn’t. The air feels somehow slim, as if molded into smallness by the pervasiveness of soft walls. Slow lines of light cast stripes along Eve and Niko’s faces, in different patterns, zigzagging in a million malleable directions. The yellow dimness drapes halfway across her cornea - she sees home and she sees empty daylight, sharing the space of one blink. Her finger appears in the conjured kaleidoscope, prepared to battle this fabricated mixture of dark familiarity and light temptation. There is, undoubtedly, some newness weighing upon her. Shifting, rolling her shoulders back against the couch, abandoning that low glow, she huffs a sigh and takes a sip of coffee. Her tongue feels hard inside her mouth - she half expects to taste metal. 

Niko brushes his hair, eyelids drooping with each swipe of the comb. His grip on the handle is loose and his jeans are old. It’s his beige t-shirt that falls over his forearms, as if it’s wearing him. Eve only sees the blurred movement of fabric - only knows him in the periphery. Her cheeks threaten to flush, to signal something - anger, surprise, sadness - but she knows there will be no color. Color has to be a feeling. The whole room is muted, with nothing to say. 

“Where do I find her?”

“Hm?” Denim and beige adopt stillness and a tension with its own vantage point. 

“No, nothing. I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” she relays to him, feeling her words drift like dust across the coffee table. The comb is placed down at the edge of the table, blocking the path of speech. He blinks up at her, and she wonders if any syllables escaped the crush of the object. 

“You’re okay, Eve?”

She nods.

“You were tired,” he clears his throat. “Dead tired, when you got into bed. Bill keep you there late?”

She remembers Bill’s coat rustling with each swipe of his ping pong paddle. They stayed in the office late to play a game, to talk about silly nothings, to feel young. It ended with a microwave ding, and with Bill pelting her with popcorn kernels across the blue table. 

Eve walked across the dead slate leading up to the tube, turned to the left and to the right, glancing down each abysmal opening of the tunnel. She stepped on and rattled home, along with everyone else on board.

The house was dark when she approached it - the door damp with humidity. Her bag was thrown onto the kitchen table, her hair released with a lazy pull. The remembrance of wine in the fridge settled within her, settled with the complacency that thinks beyond any late hour. She filled a glass and thought she heard movement upstairs, but Niko was asleep - asleep, not there. 

But wine settles slow and deep and asks for more life. She leaned her head on her hand, elbow stabbing the table, eyes lulled to different corners of the ceiling. An impression of something blinked, as if in the room with her. The sort of interwoven entity that begs to be instantly applied to the path of your life; begs to be made sense of, to be grasped by tired hands. Eve’s eyes remained on the window above the sink, fixed upon motionless night. She scratched lightly on her cheek, feeling the tight pull of a reverie stretch her senses. 

And then, everything. Eve felt suddenly surrounded by small breaths of warmth and little, unseen sparks. Then, an almost inane sense of softness, particularly of soft curves shining with vibrancy. She couldn’t comprehend it exactly, unable to visualize any complete shape, but the alcohol and the stifling normalcy of her day made her feel like sinking deep and swimming in it, whatever it was. 

She sat in it for some time, while finishing the wine. It was as if emotion was adopting visibility, breaking open before her. There was something awful about it though, because Eve could not even begin to identify it. She felt the onslaught of a shrug, the acceptance of unknowing take over, and then she walked upstairs. 

Niko was asleep, with his back facing her side of the bed. Pulling her sleep shirt over her head, Eve thought she could feel the telltale beginning of a migraine sweep across her temples. She winced and almost fell into bed, the sudden push of weight prompting Niko to shuffle. 

“Hmph,” he grunted. 

She whispered something akin to “It’s just me,” and settled against her pillow, arms loose with abandon, but ultimately bent in a rigid way at her sides. Niko turned completely then, body marred with sleep. 

“Mm, goodnight Eve. You look weird.” Niko had a proclivity towards honesty when domineered by tiredness. Eve only responded with a “tsk.” The low, stony ache at the front of her head achieved new levels as her breathing slowed toward sleep. It pressed into her: smooth in its assault, but pointed in its nearness to everything. Their bedroom, the long shadow of the door, the pillows settled on the couch downstairs, all, in some tragically normal way, paid tribute to the calm pounding just behind Eve’s eyes. Calm, fine, fulfilling - the loose conviction that life owes it to itself to be difficult. But why the pulsing difficulties within steadiness? Why does contentment seem to murder itself?

Whatever was outside the window, whatever was swirling in the night, whatever compelled Eve to just sit there and imagine the grey walls morphing into bright curves and slopes: it had a true pulse. A headache borne from that anonymous presence would not be felt as a dull throb, but as pain with meaning. 

Eve rolled over, facing the door. Her eyes trailed along a slick line of light cast in from the hallway, as her head leaned harshly into the pillow. She released a short huff of acceptance - a familiar rise within her lungs - the nightly air of dissatisfaction. Then, Eve caught onto the thin tendrils of sleep, and fell alongside an anthem of pounding. Her last semi-conscious thought was of a soft blanket, cast delicately and sympathetically over a harsh array of _something_. 

-

There is an immediate presence in the dream. It lays on the edges, hazy and wobbling. It is similar to what Eve felt in the kitchen, in the sense that it seems to suggest a separate reality, occurring elsewhere. 

There is wind in the dream, and it is obscenely steady. 

Eve identifies a table beneath her arms in a larger room, with small voices peppering the background, and two more distinctly male voices within her earshot. There is the suggestion of trying to solve a puzzle, but the pieces and the _why_ are lost in the dream. It sounds as though something is shuffling, warped within the background noises. Her subconscious tries to identify the noise - maybe paper? 

It’s Niko and Dom, next to her. And the shuffling must be cards. She’s in the bridge club. 

“When I say ale decha, what does that mean to you?” The voice pours into her like slow liquid, barely making contact with her mind. Her vision shifts over to Niko, and he is little more than a blurred outline. 

Dom laughs, mutters something that definitely isn’t received by Eve, and deemed unimportant by the dream. Suddenly, she identifies Niko’s eyes, but they barely belong to his complete form, instead seeming to overwhelm her vision, as if through a microscope. 

“Ale decha means flat-chested. Your killer was a small-breasted psycho, apparently.” Niko’s eyes spin around the words, and Eve can’t understand the bloom of excitement taking root deep in her chest, as she feels herself plunge forward, planting a kiss on what are probably Dom and Niko’s cheeks. Her vision is still lazily fixated upon the most familiar set of eyes. They blink shut, and then she’s somewhere else. 

It’s cold, white, sterile, and wears the air of transition. She feels Dom’s presence at her side again, their feet ghosting over linoleum floors. Then he’s suddenly sitting in a row of chairs against a wall. She’s looking down at him, then she’s moving down another hallway. Conscious thoughts (if any seep through at all) are delayed in dreams; Eve is still questioning the bridge club, ale decha, and the unprecedented feeling that rippled through her chest. Why did Niko’s eyes close like that, as if blinking away from some future set of pain? Why does this all feel so much like remembering? 

Eve’s on the toilet, listening to Bill’s voice streaming through from somewhere (she’ll eventually recognize it as a phone), and then she’s at the sinks, seeing herself. When she looks at herself, though, she just feels her hair and sees blankness - vision distilling into touch. It spins lower and lower as she feels water run over her hands, then spins upward again until she sees a small circle of light, as if coming out of a cave, and then her vision is filled again, in the same way that Niko’s eyes had filled it moments ago. 

Eve sees a woman - a young woman with blonde hair tied back. She’s a nurse. That’s right, Eve’s in a hospital. Dom is somewhere outside of this bathroom. The dream is instantly sharpened by this woman; she is somehow in direct relation to the overarching presence Eve felt upon first entering this deep sleep. 

“Wear it down.” 

She feels her neck tickled by loose hair, feels a hair-tie around her wrist, feels a low rise of something like mirth in her chest threatening to bubble up to the surface, because she can acknowledge that she was just _with_ whatever is outlining this entire dream. It’s the beginning of a smile but it’s cut off, because she’s screaming now, and it’s all red. 

The thought of Dom rings anxiously in her ears as her hands are wrapped around something pulsating and spewing. Her hands press down and everything visible becomes a representative of red. It’s death. It must be death but if there is any brightness to the red flow, she can only attribute it to the face in the bathroom. Eve can only see what is bright within death. Her consciousness has yet to align itself with this stage of the dream, so nothing questions this. 

She’s crying in a small, dimly lit room with Bill sitting next to her. There are two figures across the table. Eve wonders, distantly, why she is crying in front of people. They are walking then, she and Bill, out of the small space and then Bill’s hand on her back has become Niko’s, where she lays against him in their home. 

There is an uncanny mixture of disappointment and thrill hanging in the air. 

A ring at the door and then Eve is in some sort of small store. She is able to register the person she is with as one of the figures who sat across from her and Bill. Whatever she and the woman talk about settles lightly within her, as if they are somehow on the same page. The words “milk” and “affair” stand out. 

The notion of experiencing anything resembling a memory within the confines of a dream is tricky; the events play out entirely in the subconscious realm, where nothing is altogether linear or tangible. It is therefore not the woman in the bathroom that Eve remembers, but rather the feel of her, that which has been steadily establishing itself as the tone of the whole dream since the start. 

Eve’s vision becomes lost in darkness again, but in staggering through the blank tunnel, she can feel what must be more death and more life. There are things dying around her, and there are things dying within her, but there’s something screaming life at her, something that’s involved in it all. There are even more figures, there are close-calls and failures and costumes and suitcases and flights.

The whole tunnel suddenly slows, and it becomes a hallway lined with rooms. Eve feels vision return to her, feels the dream reenter some sense of time, and one of the doors fling open. She takes a careful step forward, then another. Craning her neck to peek into the room, she sees broken pieces of glass swimming in liquid trails along the floor. There is a low light within the space, coupled with the suggestion that this room is far from home. In one moment, she is standing there, amidst scattered clothes and broken bottles of nail polish. In the next, she is kneeling atop the bed, legs spread around someone’s body, straddling the figure. It’s almost the same position she assumed in the hospital, with the same task of pressing down into angry red. 

Yet, this time, there is no brightness to recall, somewhere nearby. The source is right beneath her, the dream’s muse, back again in astounding clarity. Again, blonde hair; again, tied up. What is new are the scratches and bruises staining her face, and the whimpers and shouts of pain. The knife in Eve’s own hand is new. She hears a clink - she’s thrown the knife to the side. She finds her own hands pushing against the woman’s, almost as if they were holding hands, almost as if trying to hide the hole together. Eve feels the rumble deep within her chest again, horrible and scathing. It’s vicious, hot, warped, and somehow... poignant? It’s all these things and more until Eve blinks and is left alone, staring at a blood-soaked bed. The dream falls in on itself once more. 

The sound of velcro ripping pulls Eve forward, out of the tunnel. She’s able to immediately register the area as her own bedroom. A ding sounds from downstairs, and she’s just pulled some sort of vest off of herself, and there’s a sense of bare excitement and something close to frivolousness coursing through her. Whatever is happening seems contrived, planned. 

A lapse of nothing and then it’s the woman again, slumped against the wall, wearing something lacy and black. Eve’s head spins - everything spins. Something pulls in her chest and she feels like crying. The dream allows the quiet impression that it has been some time since last seeing her, that Eve has been aching for her in some new way. And Eve can feel it in the acuteness of their movements, in how careful they are around each other. 

Soft skin manifests beneath her palm - Eve is cupping the woman’s cheek. Words are passing between them and there is a great deal of heartache supporting each syllable. It wearies Eve and makes her long for some clarity or explanation. The dream’s haze takes charge again, and Eve is bent over...the sink? She’s retching - her own fingers poking the back of her throat - there’s something she’s swallowed that she’s trying to get out. When she can feel the small dot (it’s really tiny, whatever it is) bubble back up towards her tongue, there are hands on her back. The movement itself is probably quick, but the dream slows it down. The hands move from her back to her hips, spinning her around, until she is flush against the counter. The woman’s touch is burning into her with unfamiliar heat, the arm wrapped behind her midsection holding her up is sturdy and intentional. Eve feels that she likes to be controlled like this, likes to be tossed around. It is not all about power - there is an undercurrent of something else breathing into their proximity. 

There’s a knife too, but somehow it is the last thing Eve takes care to notice.

“Will you give me everything I want?”

The words are received with piercing clarity, as if even the dream knew Eve needed to hear them. She feels her lungs swell and collapse with each bruised breath she dares to take.

In this moment, Eve acknowledges a bare sense of daring, because her eyes drop tragically to the woman’s lips, and she’s never been one to consider women in that way.

But the dream, of course, knows nothing of this loose hesitation. The dreams lets her eyes hang there, lets her huff out a needy “Yes.” The dream allows lips to her neck and hands placed more obstinately at her hips. Lips lock completely, a hand that has dropped a knife moves lower, a bright flare erupts enveloping everything in blistering color, and… Eve forgets to lock her door. The sudden sweep of night air cools her body’s red flush, but when she walks beside the woman towards a parked car, she feels angry and unsatisfied and confused and needy. They slip into the backseat and the body next to her is a radiator of soft, scented warmth. The drive’s duration is understood but not consciously lived, so Eve finds herself in a forest within one beat. 

Then, there is a spark of lucidity - not the full knowledge of being in a dream - but the genuine remembrance of this woman from past sequences, the weight of her necessity to Eve, the understanding that Eve always finds her, even after the ocean of red. 

There is a long stretch of dark inside what Eve eventually registers as some sort of container, but they are still in the forest, and they must be arguing, because Eve feels tense with wanting to push the woman away and pull her close simultaneously. She wants to know her name, and she _does_ know it, within the dream, but she can only comprehend the way in which it transforms her mouth; teeth brushing against her bottom lip, then an upward swoop, then a soft collapse of letters. 

Gaining another precious moment of lucidity, she considers her own name: how “Eve” seems to pull the throat up, from somewhere deep inside, and then seals it off with the authority of the letter “v.” 

Leaves crinkle beneath her feet as she walks out of the forest, alone.

The darkest warmth fills Eve as another room takes shape around her. There is distinctly something fixed into her ear, and it’s the source of the buzz coursing through her system. She’s never felt closer to the woman, and Eve cranes her head to find her, filled with pulsing need. There is no blonde hair anywhere in her sight and she feels like whining, because she can _hear_ her - can hear the heavy breaths, the stimulated tone. It’s husky and entire and the scene is outlined with a white hot border, malleable and gooey. Eve feels herself sighing, standing up. Then she’s on top of someone on the bed - is the woman here? No, there’s a warm length inside her, and a hard-edged body beneath her. And yet, she’s _everywhere_ . Her breaths are mountainous, surging up to a peak and Eve is racing to meet her and it’s never been this good - waking or sleeping. It’s slick and hot and relieving the deepest ache and she’s _almost_ there, she’s almost there-

“You love me.”

What?

“I love you! I do.”

It’s somewhere completely different; it’s a scene wildly ancient and dizzying. The woman is right in front of her, and Eve wants to be happy to see her, wants to reach out and press in, but it would be a fight against herself, because she is instead filled with defeated anger and something close to betrayal. The woman keeps stepping closer and Eve keeps retreating, and she feels altogether bruised by the confession of love, by what she needs and what for some reason she can’t have - right in front of her. 

Eve feels herself say something, something sterile and marked with finality, and then she’s turned around, facing utter ruins. The next moment blows her apart, sends her spinning down into the earth, and _then_ she’s happy, happy to be destroyed, happy to be ended by what she denied. 

A long lapse of nothing: the first time within the dream that Eve actually latches onto a sense of time, and everything feels irreversibly marred by stinging loss. She’s in some apartment that she doesn’t recognize beyond the understanding that it’s her own new space. Niko is not visibly there and emotionally even less so. There’s the dim familiarity of cheap wine and toilet paper rolls and Kenny next to her on the floor. She can’t exactly make out what he’s saying, but it has to do with Eve’s revival and tourists and a hospital and then the woman (she distantly thinks she brings her up - not Kenny). Eve flushes - she must be speaking of the woman when she isn’t supposed to be. 

Kenny wears the air of understanding, sympathy, and worry. Eve worries him all the way to the door, where he must suggest they see each other again soon, before leaving. 

Eve learns nothing and makes the mistake of blinking. She opens her eyes and sees Kenny on pavement, crumpled, lifeless, and floating in his own red ocean. And it’s starting to become numb - the space inside her. 

More time passes and she understands the emotions within the duration: loss, anger, disbelief, loss, regret, dejection, loss, ache, love, _loss_. 

Eve’s thinking desperately of Niko when she literally feels the woman spiraling back into her orbit with frantic movement. Movement… they’re moving… they’re _on_ something that’s moving. Eve feels a sort of demented relief as she’s finally pushing the woman back to a chorus of her own screams, pushing into her, slapping herself back into her memory, across her cheek. The dream and the woman (aren’t they synonymous?) reclaim the reigns and push Eve back into the space (a bus, Eve realizes) until she’s laying against a seat and the woman...she’s- 

Laid over Eve. Draped over her, cushioned above her body. Eve wants to think of all the ways one person can lay over another, all the ways bodies can connect in storms of anger or love, because Eve can feel the lines blurring, can feel herself leaning towards the latter in spite of it all. 

She goes on a subconscious treasure hunt and finds lips, crashing upward. Both of their eyes are open, and the dream rediscovers the woman’s eyes as the focal point and then it’s all Eve can see. Eve shudders, gasps, and so does she, and then she propels herself skyward again with implicit force, wanting to connect with the slow orbs.

It’s a splintering crash of two heads, and then the realization that everything has changed. As she feels a steady longing abound within her, her dream displays a tally of deaths: Bill, Kenny, Niko? No - a flash of grey light and she realizes it’s not Niko that’s dead, but whatever was once between them.

And it’s quick, after that. The dream is racing towards its end because Eve is racing, Eve wants to be racing, wants to act with some semblance of intent. So, the next thing she feels is her own arm wrapped around the woman, and they’re swaying, and the woman is moving in closer before leaning into Eve’s hair, and oh my god they’re dancing. There are slow words whispered to each other and they lull anything still raging within Eve. They’re close and practically intertwined and she _wants_ her, wants to stay even when she tells her to go. Eve feels a deep-seated concern for the woman thrashing around inside her, something so intent on protecting her. But she finds herself leaving the space, because she was told to, and because it’s about _listening_ to her now, it’s about making this strange apparition happy. 

She’s dragged into a slow warp and finds herself in another apartment, sitting close to the woman on a couch that is more like a loveseat. Eve briefly notes the woman’s arm resting just inches behind her head, casually, as if it’s always been like this. There are three other figures in the room (one that she finally recognizes as Carolyn), and there’s some tension wafting through, something of legitimate danger. A loud bang resounds - the sitting figure crumples up. 

One of the two still standing leaves (Eve senses that the woman has some connection to him), and then Carolyn, of whom she connects to the words “milk” and “affair,” although she isn’t sure why, is speaking to both of them. There is no chance of comprehending the words, but there is something spoken that sets Eve running. 

She runs deeper and deeper into a wide but wondrous void of dark night, hearing a voice cry out to her from behind. Eve just keeps going, wind and air and pounding steps until it’s all dark blue beneath her, and she feels comfort in teetering on this wooden plank above it all. The shout of her own name signals the approach, and the wind has brought the woman back to her side. She settles beside her dressed in flowing yellow, appearing the way a petal does when it breaks free from the flower and drifts down to mingle with blades of grass. The petals and the grass both expect this routine of nature, but one likes to imagine their sweet surprise nonetheless, when life meets the ground, and is still met with a pulsing togetherness. 

The pulse is with them on the bridge, because Eve feels sweet laughter swell behind their words and a sense of honesty that rattles her. The conversation is slow and drenched in acceptance, until it lulls, and Eve feels the woman’s back against her own. Her head rolls back against hers and Eve hears the soft breaths.

Then, an invitation. An invitation to abandon it all. 

“Don’t turn, just walk.” 

And Eve knows why this is happening; she knows that there is something wrong about their connection, and that she should just leave, but she can’t help attributing the problem to a surface-level concern that, if the dried blood was cracked and cleared away, would just look like daylight. The righteous sort of daylight. 

Eve listens to the feet behind her establish distance before her own start to move. Each step is a knife, each thought is regret singing a refrain of its more pointed form: loss. And then it’s _damn the dream_ , damn the distance, damn whatever is telling her not to hold on. Eve wills herself with stony intent, and now maybe it is a lucid dream, because she turns, and her old life is beginning to wake and blur the edges of the chimera, the life that she doesn’t want to return to, ever, not while her gaze is fixed on the soft line of yellow light breaking apart the darkness, steps ahead of her. But the woman stopped, she did stop, and she’s turning too, she’s turning open a door that Eve will never open again, that she wants demolished into the most inconsequential wood-chips, so she can just forget, forget everything but what she sees. And then Eve sees her face cracking into a smile, and she’s beautiful, and Eve must love her, and she feels her own bottom teeth lowering to make room for a “v” to escape her lips, before lifting her foot to start moving back to where they stood-

-

When Niko thinks back, he can recall hearing Eve wake up screaming multiple times throughout their married life, but he’s never turned away from the mirror to see her whimpering and crying on the way out of what must have been _some_ dream. 

He placed his hands cautiously on her shoulders, prompting her eyes to shoot open. She stared up at him (somehow, _through_ him) and adopted an expression that could only be defined as acute melancholy, then confusion.

“Where is she?” Eve asked, desperately.

“Who?”

Niko watched her mouth begin to form around a word, or maybe just a letter, before ultimately abandoning the action. He allowed a smile to turn his lips up, armed with a semi-understanding of Eve’s disposition. 

“I think you had a bad dream, darling. You’re safe now.” He caressed her cheek, ignored her subsequent wince, and went downstairs under his own suggestion of coffee.

Eve didn’t know how to tell him that she was just forced out of a life, and was now missing its warmth. 

-

“Christ Almighty, I already forgave you for beating me at ping pong!” Bill is trapped in a death-grip, meant to resemble a hug.

“Mm, shut up Bill,” Eve presses in closer, needing to discredit at least one more aspect of the dream. She had practically pounced on Kenny upon first entering the building. 

“Seriously, should I be concerned here?” Bill asks, literally on the verge of gasping for air. Eve relaxes her hold and leans back to look at him, and she can’t stop the goofy smile spreading onto her face. 

“I’m just glad you’re here, you doof,” Eve mutters, pushing him away lightly. He just flashes his stupid smile at her, reminds her of how perfectly insane he’s always known her to be, and walks back to his own desk. Eve sits down, scratching at her hands. 

She feels altogether harmed by reality. It’s impossible to fully remember the dream, but she remembers the bloom within her chest, and the windy arc of passion. And it did become affection, undoubtedly, somewhere along the way, and Eve doesn’t understand how it is a woman who has breathed into her heart like this, and how she’s supposed to continue on. It was as if the woman filled a hole inside her that Eve hadn’t even been aware of, and now it was even wider in her absence. 

Eve longs to live it all again, even the bloody intervals. What happened to the careful harmony of malice and tenderness flowing eternally between them? It must belong to the dream but Eve needs it back, needs to steal it and establish authorship, needs to race through another endless series of voids just to find even one more strand of blonde hair on a bridge. 

It’s warm - the way it weighs down upon her. It’s warm and it’s vital. 

-

She meets the newly hired MI5 psychologist Martin at lunch for a routine chat, but he quickly notices the haze in her demeanor and starts prodding in his gentle, infuriating way. Eve only casually mentions that she had a rather lengthy dream, but even remembering something as inconsequential as its length has Eve falling back into it’s all-consuming tone. It starts to pour out of her in waves, and Martin seems content to listen. 

“And you’ve never felt that way for another woman?”

“No, never.”

“And you felt like you shouldn’t want it?”

“Yes, but not because she was a woman.”

“Then why do you think?”

“I think we somehow… hurt each other. It’s like the potential for pain was always there.”

Martin sniffs.

“But with the pain there was…” he trails off, suggestively.

“Want,” Eve states, careful to avoid the boiling reality of the deeper word. “Martin, you’re the one who asked me. So what does it mean?”

“Well, Freud would say that your dream signifies a repressed wish.”

“But-“

“Sleep attempts to remedy whatever is wrong, even if that remedy is not tangible in your waking hours. We’re human, right? We always want what isn’t real, Eve.” Martin clasps his hands together over the cafeteria table, eyeing Eve.

“But this isn’t as if I dreamt of God or something, I... I dreamt of a person. And she doesn’t exist!” Eve shouts above a whisper.

Martin narrows his eyes. “She isn’t real, or you haven’t met her?”

“Is there a difference?”

-

Something about going out with Elena always leads Eve to drink too much. 

“Woooo slow your roll madam!” Elena laughs loosely into her ear as Eve practically falls into the car they ordered. “Niko’s got you thirsty tonight, huh?”

Eve leans against the smudged window, following a trail of blurred lights through narrowed vision. It’s like a sad restoration of what she saw on the bridge; the lights are clearer, reminding her bitterly of the sharpness of reality. She misses the blonde blur. 

“Woah, what’s going on?” There’s concern marking Elena’s voice, and Eve realizes hot tears rolling down her own cheeks. She just waves her hand nonchalantly, mumbles that she’s just drunk and whiny. Elena stares.

“Bullshit, you’ve been off all day,” she says gently, but with conviction. Her voice slows down when she asks, “Is it about the dream?

Eve turns towards her, mouth agape. “How do you-”

“Martin.”

“God, I want his ass fired.”

Elena laughs but remains ultimately serious. She places her hand comfortingly on Eve’s knee and says, “It’s about a twenty minute drive back to mine. Can this story fit into that time slot? I’m a busy woman.”

Eve smiles and when she enters her recollection, she blubbers all over again.

-

“Eve, if this is all just an elaborate tale to express your gayness, you really could have just told me flat out.” 

Eve giggles, blowing her nose with the handkerchief Elena had given her early into the story. 

“You’re in love with her! And you think you… stabbed her? Badass! I just dream about my mum screaming at me.”

“Okay,” Eve laughs, “I’m glad I told you this. And uh, you should probably have a chat with your mom.”

“Meh, useless at this point. I think _you_ should have a chat with the mystery lady!”

“She’s not real.”

“You’re sure she’s not just someone you’ve brushed by in Tesco once?”

“I’d remember her.” Eve feels the rush of emotion overwhelming her again. “It’s so stupid, but I feel like I’m mourning someone.” She wipes maniacally at her eyes.

“Hey,” Elena’s voice is genuine and slow, “Let yourself feel it. You can, you know? You can miss her. You can hang onto that memory.” 

Eve nods in solemn agreement. She thinks she sees a spark in Elena’s eye, and she almost decides to ignore it, partly because it’s probably just another symptom of inevitable insanity, with all of these sparks and colors and lights she keeps seeing and grasping at. 

“I’ve been through a lot of shitty break-ups, right? So, when I’m crying alone in my room and just missing whatever asshole threw me to the curb, I write them a letter. To pretend I’m speaking to them, and to just get it all out. It might help you, Eve.”

Eve nods again, and she accepts the spark within her.

-

_Hi,_

_I’m not sure what your name is, I think it begins with a V. My name is Eve. It’s been so good to meet you._

_You’re a dream. I closed my eyes last night, after feeling something in my kitchen - the lost breeze of something - and then I opened my eyes to you._

_I think I lived a whole life with you._

_I feel like I’m missing so much. There’s so much I don’t understand but, throughout my day, I’ve been kind of realizing that I like these gaps in the story. I like only seeing everything through the outline of you, without anything too frivolous to distract me._

_Where the hell did you come from? I might spend forever thinking of your phantom touch, your pretty eyes, your presence. I feel solved, but abandoned. Maybe I don’t need you forever, but my god, I needed you once. To dream of anything else would be to never know myself the way I do now._

_Why do I want to hold you? Are you happy, wherever you are? I know you exist somewhere, somehow. I’d like to just sit on a bench with you, so we can meet each other sweetly and openly._

_We hurt each other in the loose cavities of the dream. I love you. These lines can only be written right next to each other - the obscenity of it all. I just want to lose myself in a million more dichotomies with you._

_If you’re just a dream, then let me live it one more time. The phrase “don’t ever leave me” keeps spilling into my mind. I wish I could meet you with more eloquence, or express this with more certainty, but I can only offer the soul that’s turning around, over and over again, to look back and see only you._

_Thank you, for all of it._

_Wide awake,_

_Eve_

-

As Eve gets ready for work the next morning under the warmth of an early sun, somewhere in Vienna Kasia Molkovska watches her boyfriend bleed out on warm pavement. She only remembers a wisp of blonde hair walking away from them.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I've been wanting to explore Eve in a character study of sorts, so I said let me complicate it further and have her dream all the major events with Villanelle up to 3x08 BEFORE ever meeting Villanelle. I really enjoyed writing this, and I hope anyone finds some enjoyment reading it as well! As always, feedback is deeply appreciated!
> 
> Title is from the poem "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @prepxn


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